If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result
of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for
every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know
neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Sun Tzu

When one wants to see one's self a mirror is used. And that works
for a single person. If the mirror is large enough, two, three or
even more may look at the same time. But when you wish to have
thousands look at themselves, a mirror just does not do. Then it
takes something else. In this case a study done by 5 people at 3
different universities has taken an admitted important first
step in understanding the psychology and morality of Libertarians.

It can serve as a first glance at us. It takes a look at the role of
psychological predispositions in formation of political attitudes. In
other words why are we libertarianslibertarians?

And what did I find when I read the study? I found that instead of
being "immoral calculating rationalists who also have a somewhat
unseemly hedonistic bent."1, libertarians have a very highly
developed and strong moral sense. I was shocked. And pleased. But it
turns out to be very different in foundation and form from what
liberals (those on the left side of the diamond) and from what
conservatives (those on the right side of the diamond) or even, I
assume, statist (those at the bottom) who weren't even considered at
a separate group in this study.

Libertarian morality has been found in this study to be based upon
placing the most important value upon the individual as the most
important moral actor. Whereas liberals place more importance upon
humanity as a whole and conservatives place more importance upon the
group that one identifies with or is a member of. Both of those
political identities are more based upon emotion than upon an
application of reason and logic. And both regard groups as more
important.

Libertarians (at least the ones in this study) have revealed that
they "rely upon reason moreand emotion lessthan will
either liberals or conservatives."2 Something that I found to be very
pleasing and rather expected. Almost all libertarians I know are much
more concerned with the logic and rationality of a position or an
argument than with its effect upon any one person, group, or
organization. In fact Ayn Rand who laid the philosophical ground
work upon which our political movement is the expression was a great
proponent of logic and reason.

One of the most prominent personality factors found was the tendency
among libertarians towards logic and reason. Much more pronounced
than was found for either conservatives or liberals.

My belief is that our moral foundation is based upon individual
liberty because it is more rational and logical to base a moral
system upon such. Indeed this is a very common theme in both
Libertarian and Objectivist writings. But, the study did not go into
whether we are more logical because of our predispositions toward
libertarianism, more libertarian because of our predispositions
towards logic, or whether they are both expressions of the same
psychological predispositions.

The study found that the range of libertarian moral concerns is very
narrow in scope. In fact when all moral choices are examined with
individual liberty being the paramount value it is unsurprising that
libertarians are found to place all moral situations in the context
of how it impacted individual liberty. It was not even just in the
context of any particular person's liberty, but it also applied to
individual liberty as a concept. It was even found that libertarians
while showing less emotional in general exhibited their strongest
reaction against interference from others in our exercise of our
liberty.

Conservatives were found to have a much higher reliance on
conformity, loyalty and tradition as guides in moral choices than
were libertarians or liberals. Whereas liberals were found to rely on
the concepts of harm, benevolence and altruism more than either
conservatives or libertarians do. Libertarians relied on none of the
traditional concepts of morality. But we matched where the other two
groups we rated low on their reliance for those concepts.

We are also less affected by things that disgust conservatives and
similar in our measure of disgust to things as are liberals. This is
a measure of tolerance. This means, that we do not care what you do
in your private life, but if you take pictures, we will want to see
them but we will not be pushy about it.

When compared on dimensions of compassion, sympathy, and empathy to
conservatives and liberals, libertarians exhibit much less of these.
We will make fun of you in the pictures.

Libertarians were also found to be "more individualistic and
independent compared to both liberals and conservatives"3. We value
these traits. Libertarians look for these traits in other people and
wish to associate with others who are like us. This is why we have
the Libertarian Party. Humans are social creatures and need
interaction with other humans. They also tend to want to hang out
with those people who see the world in the same way. But that is a
very much documented human trait. We will take pictures of ourselves
and our close personal friends.

So when we look in this mirror, we see rational, logical, emotionally
controlled and un-sympathetic people who are generally highly
educated and who seek scientific explanations for the things that
happen in the world. Sounds like Mr. Spock. And Vulcans are cool.

This is who we are.

But what about those other guysthe conservatives and the
liberals? Compared to us they are less likely to try and use rational
thought to form a system of morals. They are more likely to sacrifice
the liberty of people to try and help them. Failing to realize that
individual liberty is a justifiable end. Not just the best means for
human achievement.

They are more reactionary and more emotional than we are. And there
is a possible biological component. Like the study said
"Psychologists have long theorized that values evolve from the
interaction of heritable dispositions, childhood learning, and
social-contextual factors"4. So, there is hope. They just outnumber
us at the moment. We might need to engage in more outreach and
education to the young. Because the strength of any of these factors
is unknown and we might be able to teach liberty, freedom, logic,
reason and capitalism to our young people and have a much more
rational population in the future, and if we can do enough of this,
maybe in the very near future.

Some of them are people that actually believe that not only are they
their brother's keeper, but that everybody should be so. There are
also some of them who believe that liberty is only appropriate as a
means to an end and is disposable as needed. They completely fail to
realize that individual liberty is necessary condition for human
existence as humans. Nor is it realized that it is morally wrong to
impose the position of 'brother's keeper' upon anyone or their
brother unwillingly.

So, the question is how do we ensure that the paramount moral concern
of individual liberty is preserved?

The thing is we are similar to liberals in some things. Similar to
conservatives in other things. But are more logical and rational than
either of them. And that I believe is our ultimate strength. We need
to cooperate with the liberals in the goals that we have in common by
appealing to their empathy and concern and respect for personal
freedom. We need to work with conservatives on those goals that we
have in common by appealing to their need and respect for stability
and tradition and economic freedom. Even though we correctly value
economic and personal liberty more than either of those two groups.
And where we have goals that are uniquely our own, we can find a way
to play one of them against the other and gain the support of that
group that is more like us in that goal.

We need to have a plan that does this. And we should be able to do
this. We just need to think, analyze, and plan. And those are our
strengths.